Vidya Balan says Mission Mangal was Seen as an ‘Akshay Kumar Film’

 

Mission Mangal was a huge success and the film starred Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan and three other actresses. Vidya Balan has been a part of many good films and is going great as an actor after The Dirty Picture. She recently featured on the O Womaniya! 2022 Adda by Film Companion and talked about how producers are afraid to make women-centric films. 

She took the example of Mission Mangal and how only Akshay was credited for the success of the film. She said that the film did great business but it was seen as an Akshay Kumar film, which is very unfortunate. "It’s not Akshay Kumar and five other leading ladies, because we’re not being seen as having led the film in any way. But the story couldn’t have been told with just Akshay Kumar, and it wasn’t told with just him. Someone was talking to me about my last hits, and they didn’t mention Mission Mangal, and they said, ‘Woh toh Akshay Kumar…’ and I was like, ‘Did you not see me and four other female actors?,"'. Meanwhile, apart from Akshay and Vidya, the film also starred Sonakshi Sinha, Taapsee Pannu, Nithya Menen, Kirti Kulhari and Sharman Joshi.

She also said, "Our industry is going through some kind of flux where a lot of our films are bombing, terribly. And they are your so-called, male hero-led films. But who takes the beating is the female-led films." She said that people don't realise that Gangubai Kathiawadi had no man leading it, but it was Alia Bhatt and it did great numbers compared to a lot of other films that had male heroes. She said that it's very frustrating as there is no logic to it.